This relates generally to imaging devices, and more particularly, to imaging devices with super-resolution imaging capabilities.
Image sensors are commonly used in electronic devices such as cellular telephones, cameras, and computers to capture images. In a typical arrangement, an electronic device is provided with an image sensor and a corresponding lens for focusing image light onto the image sensor.
In some devices, multiple images are captured and combined into a single output image. For example, several relatively low-resolution images may be combined to form a relatively higher resolution image. The combined high-resolution image is often called a super-resolution image.
A super-resolution image contains information having a spatial frequency that is higher than the limiting (Nyquist) spatial frequency of the low-resolution images. This information is unavailable in each low-resolution image, however it can be recovered by combining multiple low-resolution images.
Conventional image sensors are designed to maximize the image signal-to-noise ratio of image data and to minimize the lateral dimensions and physical volume of the image sensor. However, maximizing the image signal-to-noise ratio of image data and the lateral dimensions and physical volume of the image sensor can limit the amount of available information above the Nyquist frequency that can be recovered when combining multiple images.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide imaging devices with improved super-resolution image capture capabilities.